I think his own words speak to that. The Oregonian has an article today telling us what the governor of Oregon thinks about the Iraq war…

Gov. Ted Kulongoski continues to attend nearly every funeral of Oregonians killed in Iraq. And he doesn’t believe for a minute they died defending the nation from terrorism.

"It’s all part of a message, but it is not the reason we’re there," Kulongoski said in an interview with The Oregonian. The real reason: Oil, he said.

"If they had zero oil, do you think we’d be there?"

Yes Mr. Kulongoski, I think we’d still be there. Read this post for an enumerated listing of the reason’s we’re there in the first place. We have enough proven sources of oil here in the United States to take care of our need for oil for a decent amount of time… if Democrats like yourself would let us tap them.

OK, in case you didn't know, a small bomb was detonated in New York's famed Times Square, just outside the door of a USMC recruiting office.

Now, I admit when I heard this, my first inclination was similar to many of my blogging peers, that the anti war activists had decided to take their show to the big apple, in a big way.  Hot Air summarized it well:

Given the escalating protests over military recruitment, it seems inevitable that people would bomb those who seek to protect the nation and fight our enemies. This morning, unknown attackers bombed a Times Square military recruitment office.

…

Now the movement has decided to morph into domestic terrorism. Of course, the people responsible will claim that they bombed the office during the night to keep anyone from being hurt. That’s exactly the same kind of rationalization that people like the Weather Underground and the SLA used at first, anyway — that terrorism was justified by their politics. In fact, a few like William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn still claim that.

First of all, I read this at Rosemary's Thoughts:

Code Pinko vs. Move America Forward

Now is the time to fight back. If you have to wear pink just to get in under cover, do so. They are on to our plan to show up on the 12th. They are planning to stack the deck by having all code pinkos sitting in those chairs. DO NOT ALLOW THIS. Here is the e-mail I received from Move America Forward:

The radical anti-military group, Code Pink, has been paying attention to our plans to organize a pro-troop demonstration in front of the Berkeley City Council Chambers on Tuesday, February 12th. (Located at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Berkeley, CA - CLICK HERE FOR A MAP).

We learned of this posting from Code Pink and their allies today: www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/02/07/18477667.php.

I know that having heard about this fiasco, I wish I could have been there.

Well, Berkeley was nice enough to videotape their session, and I managed to upload to YouTube some interesting clips:

Because of the procedures they use, the main resolution asking the Marines to leave (Item 12) was not called to the floor for discussion, it was instead accepted as part of the Constant Calendar.  The real debate was about the parking permit and fee waivers for Code Pink (Item 15).

But before that got started, I did find this interesting clip of Council member Olds, who spoke against Item 12 and recorded her no vote, but still managed to totally trash the Marine Corp in the process.

Yes there it is again.  They can't get real jobs or go to college so they join the Marines.  Of course, since the office they are protesting is an Officers Recruiting Center, that is pure nonsense, as they are specifically looking for college graduates.

I had hope that Benazir Bhutto would prove to be a moderating influence on Pakistan, and would come to some kind of power sharing agreement with President Musharraf, to combat the Islamic Fundamentalists in the nation, and provide a beacon of hope to the Muslim world.  Sadly, that will never come to pass.  I had considered what, exactly, to say on this, and found a link from LGF to a piece by Pamela Bone in the Australian that said it all:

Bhutto was murdered because to her enemies she was Westernised, a traitor to her culture and an American stooge. She was murdered because she had vowed to bring secularism and democracy to Pakistan. She was murdered because she was all these things, and a woman.

“I know I am a symbol of what the so-called jihadists, Taliban and al-Qa’ida, most fear,” she wrote in her autobiography, Daughter of the East. “I am a female political leader fighting to bring modernity, communication, education and technology to Pakistan.”

I believe that one reason for my decline in posting over the last few months, besides time constraints due to business, is that so many things that I want to say, have already been said, and far more eloquently, by others.  Case in point is a Two-fer from Big Lizards last week:

“The Courage to Do Nothing”

And here’s a nice round-up of forbidden knowledge from the Republicans in the Senate, led by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK, 100%), ranking member (and former chairman) of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works (EPW). Inhofe is a national treasure, one of the few Republicans not only willing to stand up against the greedy socialists at the UN (many Republicans do that), but also willing to put in the time to educate himself on the actual science involved.

Indebted to Younghusband at Coming Anarchy for pointing out this piece by Robert Kaplan in a recent issue of the American Interest:

Cut One:

It is obvious that a military can only fight well on behalf of a society in which it believes, and that a society which believes little is worth fighting for cannot, in the end, field an effective military. Obvious as this is, we seem to have forgotten it.

Cut Two:

When pleasure and convenience become values in and of themselves, false ends displace necessary means. It is as Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz said: While a good society should certainly never want to go to war, it must always be prepared to do so. But a society will not fight for what it believes, if all it believes is that it should never have to fight.

Cut Three:

From the mouth of the enemy himself, comes this report from Al-Jazeera:

 Hundreds of protesters have marched through the Sudanese capital Khartoum demanding death for a British school teacher convicted of insulting Islam.

The protesters chanted “no one lives who insults the prophet”, a day after Gillian Gibbons was sentenced to 15 days in jail and deportation for allowing her class to named a teddy bear Mohammad.

They waved green Islamic flags, held up ceremonial swords and chanted religious and nationalist slogans as they took to the streets after Friday prayers.

The naming of a toy animal after Islam’s most revered prophet has sparked great controversy in the African nation.

Can we PLEASE now move beyond the rediculous idea that the Islamists (or Salafists, or Wahabbis, or Muslim Fundamentalists, or Islamokazes, or whatever you want to call them) are somehow reasonable people, that we just need to learn to get along with?

From GOP.Gov:

Today, House Republicans offered a resolution censuring Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark (D-CA) for accusing our troops of “blow[ing] up innocent people” and suggesting the President finds “amusement” in the injuries and deaths of our troops. Watch Rep. Stark’s comment in full here.

The censure resolution states:

“Resolved, that the Member from California, Mr. Stark, by his despicable conduct, has dishonored himself and brought discredit to the House and merits the censure of the House for the same.”

But today, 196 House Democrats voted to kill the resolution censuring Rep. Stark. (Vote #986, 10/23/07)

Disgusting.  Even the San Francisco Chronicle thought Stark was out of line:

“A new low point … The Ugly Moment of the Week goes to Rep. Pete Stark, the Fremont Democrat who has made a career out of minimalist accomplishment and optimal bombast.”

I saw this on several blogs today and at first I was of the same mind as the others, but as the day has gone on, I think there is an unanswered question.

The situation is that David Shuster was interviewing Rep Marsha Blackburn, and he decided to sandbag her on the air by demanding if she knew the name of the last GI killed from her distract. 

She didn't, and gleefully, he trotted out the name to shame her:

SHUSTER: Let's talk about the public trust. You represent of course a district in western Tennessee. What was the name of the last soldier from your district who was killed in Iraq?

MARSHA BLACKBURN: The name of the last soldier killed in Iraq from my district? I do not know.

SHUSTER: OK, his name was Jeremy Bohannon. He was killed August the ninth, 2007. How come you didn't know the name?